| PublicationDate: 6/25/99 Summary: Update on the Recipient and Financial Management System (RFMS) Author: PSS - Program Systems Service Posted on June 25, 1999 To: All Destination Points From: Jerry Russomano, Director Program Systems Service, Office of Student Financial Assistance Subject: Update on the Recipient and Financial Management System (RFMS) This message - Updates you on RFMS Testing TESTING CONTINUES We have begun Beta testing for Regular Disbursements with 6 schools. The testing will be with schools using mainframe, a third party servicer and the new EDExpress version 5.3 for year 1999-2000. We should have the results of those tests back in a few days. Year 2000 testing for RFMS Origination Records will continue until July 23, 1999. Year 2000 Testing for Pell Disbursements, ESOA, and data requests will run from July 12 to August 20th, 1999. For more information about Year 2000 Testing, visit the Department's website at http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocio/index.html. We are coming to the completion of our testing of special disbursements and the Multiple Reporting Record. Testing has been very productive. We continue to be very pleased with the results and our progress. We will continue to update you on the schedule for the implementation of the various components. TIP OF THE WEEK One of the changes RFMS has implemented for 99-00 is that pennies are now accepted. Previously all payments were made in whole dollar amounts, now schools will send the disbursement amount in a seven-digit number. This number uses a leading zero and has two places for cents (i.e. 0312500). Please note you must use zeros in the cent field even if you are using whole dollars. WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEND YOU WEEKLY STATUS REPORTS Look for them in- - Title IV Wide Area Network (TIVWAN) - The Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) website located at http://www.ifap.ed.gov, and - Listserves: - FINAID-L - FINNET-L - MEDAID-L - BURSAR-L - SFATECH IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS - If you have questions, comments, or concerns about RFMS, please call Pell Customer Service at 1-800/474-7268 (select option 2) or send an e-mail to #Pell_Systems@ed.gov. - If you have questions about the 1999-2000 EDExpress Pell software, contact the Central Processing System customer service staff at 1-800/330-5947 or send an e-mail to CPS@NCS.COM. - If you have questions about RFMS message classes or problems connecting to the network, contact the TIVWAN customer service staff at 1-800/615-1189 or send an e-mail to T4WAN@NCS.COM. Reminder: Your TIVWAN EDConnect Desk Reference contains all the information you need about getting help by telephone or on the Internet. |